wisconsinhttp://www.libertyunbound.com/taxonomy/term/207/all
enRight-to-Work Nation?http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/1387
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Gary Jason </div>
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<p>The contagion is spreading.</p>
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<p>The mainstream media has more or less ignored some interesting news out of Wisconsin. It is that the governor, the unflappable Scott Walker, has signed into law a right-to-work bill that covers private sector unions.</p><p>This makes Wisconsin the 25th state in the country to adopt right-to-work legislation, that is, legislation that stops any union from forcing workers to support it.</p><p>Wisconsin&rsquo;s action is notable for a variety of reasons. First, it is a traditionally blue state. Second, it is an upper-Midwest industrial state. Third, it has a <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-next-right-to-work-victory-1424476650">history of heavy unionization</a> &mdash; about one-fifth higher than the national average (8.2%, compared to 6.7%). Back in the mid-1980s, over 20% of Wisconsin private sector workers were in unions.</p><p>Also, like Michigan, Wisconsin passed the bill even though its governor was initially reluctant to support it. Walker had originally called it a &ldquo;distraction,&rdquo; but after the state senate majority leader pushed the billed through the legislature, Walker quickly signed it into law.</p><p>The law did not have bipartisan support. In the state assembly, all 35 Democrats voted against it while all 62 Republicans voted for it. In the senate, 14 Democrats (joined by one turncoat Republican) voted against it, while the remaining 17 Republicans voted for it.</p><div class="pullquote"><p>The vitriol reached its peak when a union supporter threatened to gut Walker&rsquo;s <em>wife </em>&ldquo;like a deer.&rdquo;</p></div><p>Proponents of Big Labor hegemony were <a href="http://www.thestate.com/2015/03/06/4028424/wisconsin-assembly-sends-right.html">predictably outraged</a> at Walker&rsquo;s signing the bill. One union supporter lamented, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to take 25 to 40 years to correct problems Scott Walker&rsquo;s done in 4 &frac12; years.&rdquo; Phil Neuefeldt, head of Wisconsin&rsquo;s AFL-CIO, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/us/politics/walker-is-set-to-deliver-new-blow-to-labor-and-bolster-credentials.html?_r=0">threatened</a>, &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not going to forget about it.&rdquo; And of course our unifying President Barack Obama had to chime in, calling the Wisconsin law &ldquo;a sustained, coordinated assault in unions, led by powerful interests and their allies in government.&rdquo;</p><p>As if Obama&rsquo;s whole tenure weren&rsquo;t a result of the machinations of powerful interests &mdash; not least of which is Big Labor.</p><p>But then, Walker has made a career of facing down unions. In his first term, he pushed through restrictions on public employee unions&rsquo; collective bargaining powers, forced public employees to contribute more to their pension and health care benefits, and gave government employees the right to opt out of the obligation to pay dues to the public employee unions.</p><p>These modest reforms appear to have saved local governments in Wisconsin $3 billion in taxpayer dollars and kept property taxes from rising while keeping the number of teachers from being cut. But the teachers&rsquo; unions are <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-wisconsin-walkers-anti-union-law-has-crippled-labor-movement/2015/02/22/1eb3ef82-b6f1-11e4-aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html">singing the blues</a>: the National Education Association saw its Wisconsin membership drop from 100,000 to 66,000, the American Federation of Teachers (representing the college teachers) saw a drop of 50%, and the state employees union dropped from 70,000 to 21,000.</p><p>For all this, Walker faced near-riotous demonstrations and a recall election, with Big Labor money flowing in from across the nation, to remove him. The public employee unions even tried to remove a Wisconsin state Supreme Court judge who had upheld Walker&rsquo;s earlier law.</p><p>The vitriol reached its peak when a union supporter threatened to gut Walker&rsquo;s <em>wife </em>&ldquo;like a deer.&rdquo; I am always moved by the boundless compassion offered by progressive liberals.</p><p>The rhetoric of the Walker-haters aroused by the current law &mdash; which, please note, merely gives private-sector workers the freedom given to public sector workers, years ago &mdash; has been amazing. But what is to come will almost surely be worse. GOP legislators are <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/scott-walker-signs-right-to-work-bill-b99457819z1-295609181.html">now indicating</a> that they will take on Wisconsin&rsquo;s nearly century-old &ldquo;prevailing wage law,&rdquo; which forces governments to pay union-dictated wages on all public works projects.</p><p>In the end, what is driving the push for worker freedom is popular opinion, supported by unarguable logic. One <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/right-to-work-the-ultimate-lost-cause-for-wisconsin-unions-b99451924z1-294128031.html">recent poll</a> put public support for the right of workers not to support a union at 62%. And the reasons have been the same for decades. First, unions force workers to support candidates and causes they abhor. Second, unions often destroy the businesses that employ the workers. Third, unions violate the human right of free association.</p><p>With the action in Wisconsin, half the states in the union now give liberty to workers to belong or refuse to belong to unions. In many of the remaining states, such as California, the stranglehold of Big Labor is too strong to break. Yet there is hope. Should Scott Walker ever become president, with a Congress controlled by Republicans, it is possible that a federal right-to-work law would be enacted.</p><p>Should that ever happen, there would be a cry of freedom from American workers that would rock the gates of Heaven itself.</p><p>And it could happen.</p> </div>
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&lt;p&gt;Gary Jason is an academic philosopher and a senior editor of &lt;em&gt;Liberty&lt;/em&gt;. His recent books, &lt;em&gt;Disturbing Thoughts: Unorthodox Writings on Timely Issues &lt;/em&gt;and &lt;em&gt;Philosophic Thoughts: Essays on Logic and Philosophy &lt;/em&gt;are both available through Amazon.&lt;/p&gt; </div>
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http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/1387#commentsemploymentjobslaborscott walkerunionswisconsinReflectionsSat, 21 Mar 2015 03:42:25 +0000LibertyUnbound1387 at http://www.libertyunbound.comThe Ryan Pickhttp://www.libertyunbound.com/node/870
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Jon Harrison </div>
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<p>Disastrous.</p>
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<p>With his selection of Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his running mate, Mitt Romney has decided the 2012 presidential election. Barack Obama will be reelected president of the United States.</p><p>Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, brings Romney needed credibility with conservatives. Indeed, over the past few days establishment conservatives have been waging a pick-Ryan campaign in the media, and probably behind the scenes with Romney&rsquo;s people as well. Ryan is a serious figure intellectually, and commands respect within establishment political circles. But he has spent over a decade in Congress, and as a result is viewed with some skepticism by Tea Party types. He will not excite the yahoo wing of the party as Sarah Palin did in 2008.</p><p>But just how much Ryan solidifies Romney&rsquo;s support from the base is beside the point. Indeed, the Ryan pick shows just how out of touch Romney is with political realities. Conservatives were going to hold their noses and vote for Romney anyway, because they hate Obama. What Romney needed was a VP pick who would help him win over independents, particularly women. Ryan doesn&rsquo;t do that. But the damage the Ryan pick does to Romney goes beyond this.</p><p>The problem is Ryan&rsquo;s plan for Medicare. I&rsquo;m not going to discuss the merits of the Ryan plan here; this is a piece about electoral politics. The Ryan plan will be pounded day in and day out by Democrats. By November Ryan and Romney will literally look like losers, irritable and worn from weeks and weeks of defending a plan that most people (and all oldsters) will perceive as the evisceration of a sacrosanct entitlement. Even people over 60 who belong to the Tea Party believe that their Medicare benefits must be preserved, no matter the cost.</p><p>Romney&rsquo;s people may believe that Ryan will bring them Wisconsin, and winning that state becomes a bit more likely with Ryan on the ticket. But it&rsquo;s still very much a reach for the Republicans. Scott Walker&rsquo;s success in surviving the recall election earlier this year is not likely a harbinger of Republican prospects in November. Many Walker voters who were standing up against Wisconsin&rsquo;s public employee unions (i.e., voting their pocketbooks), will not support cuts in Medicare and Social Security.</p><p>Had Romney been looking to pick off a battleground state, he should&rsquo;ve picked Rob Portman of Ohio. Ohio is bigger than Wisconsin, and Republicans had a decent chance of carrying the state. Portman might have put them over the top there. The Ryan pick places Ohio more firmly in the Democratic column.</p><p>I originally thought that Romney would pick a woman or a Hispanic (Marco Rubio), because he lags badly with both groups. I did an analysis in June that gave President Obama 22 states and the District of Columbia with a total of 270 electoral votes, the minimum needed to win. With five months to go the election was clearly very much up for grabs. I thought then that Romney would pick Portman, as Ohio is a state Romney needs to win if he is to prevail. With the selection of Ryan, Romney has probably lost Ohio <em>and</em> Florida, which in June I had going to the Republicans. If Romney loses both Ohio and Florida, there is no way he gets to 270 electoral votes.</p><p>The idea that major structural reform of Medicare and Social Security will play politically, in a time of economic uncertainty and widespread voter despair, is utter nonsense. Yet that is what Romney apparently believes, based on his selection of Ryan. Romney truly is out of touch with reality. His dippiness was already apparent in his views on foreign policy. His economic policies &mdash; on tax reform, job creation, and yes, entitlement reform &mdash; were in fact far more sensible than anything put forward by the Democrats, and this constituted his main advantage over Obama. But by placing radical reform of Medicare and Social Security in the forefront of the political debate &mdash; that is, by picking Paul Ryan &mdash; Romney has cost himself the election. The only question now is how big Obama&rsquo;s margin will be.</p> </div>
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Jon Harrison is a contributing editor of Liberty. </div>
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http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/870#commentsBarack ObamacampaignElectionfloridamarco rubiomitt romneyohiopaul ryanrob portmanvice presidentwisconsinReflectionsSun, 12 Aug 2012 00:21:02 +0000LibertyUnbound870 at http://www.libertyunbound.comWould You Buy a Used Poll from These Men?http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/819
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Stephen Cox </div>
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<p>Walker wins in desperately un-close race.</p>
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<p>On Tuesday evening, June 5, two hours after voting closed in Wisconsin, the <em>Los Angeles Times </em>website was still headlining a story about how its exit polls projected an extremely close race &mdash; at a moment when the bulk of the vote was in, and Republican Governor Walker was running almost 20 points ahead of his opponent, Democratic Mayor Barrett of Milwaukee.</p><p>An hour before, CNN had somehow <em>revised</em> its <em>exit-poll</em> projections from 50&ndash;50 to a modest 52&ndash;48 for Walker. Even Fox News&rsquo; exit polls indicated a race that was &ldquo;knife-edge&rdquo; close. These polls were remarkably wrong. All the predictions were, including the predictions that brought 400 Democratic lawyers into Wisconsin, determined to contest a close election. (Wouldn&rsquo;t you have loved to see those suits trooping off the plane in Milwaukee, cellphones and briefcases at the ready?) Walker won by a margin of about 7%, somewhat unusual in seriously contested American elections, but the same as President Obama&rsquo;s national margin in 2008, sometimes hailed as a &ldquo;landslide.&rdquo;</p><p>Nevertheless, about an hour after CNN finally projected Walker as the winner, its hapless anchorman, John King, was still talking about the exit polls. While they were somewhat off, he said, they still indicated that Obama was way ahead of Romney in Wisconsin. Having said that, he turned to a map of the United States and changed Wisconsin from an expected Obama victory to a toss-up. Then, half an hour later, he opined, &ldquo;Our exit polls clearly undercounted Walker&rdquo; (yeah, do you think so?), but added that we shouldn&rsquo;t project the Wisconsin results onto the national election in November. (Maybe &mdash; why not?)</p><p>Still later, with 80% of the votes in and Walker running 12 points ahead , King was prompted by his younger colleague, Erin Burnett (who, thank God for intelligence, kept harping on the disparity between polls and performance), to speculate about what had (obviously) gone wrong with the exit polls. Thereupon King babbled things about how you might overestimate something in an exit poll, or &ldquo;guess&rdquo; wrong, and that&rsquo;s why you need to correct the exit polls when the actual votes come in. Huh? So what&rsquo;s an exit poll? And what&rsquo;s a poll? And why should we worship them? A commercial break; then King was asked another embarrassing question about the polls&rsquo; failure to predict what happened. He replied, &ldquo;The exit polls were weighted anti-Walker, pro-Barrett.&rdquo; Pardon me? What did he mean by that?</p> </div>
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&lt;p&gt;Stephen Cox is editor of &lt;em&gt;Liberty&lt;/em&gt;, and a professor of literature at the University of California San Diego. His recent books include &lt;em&gt;The Big House: Image and Reality of the American Prison&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;American Christianity: The Continuing Revolution&lt;/em&gt;. Newly published is &lt;em&gt;Culture and Liberty&lt;/em&gt;, a selection of works by Isabel Paterson.&lt;/p&gt; </div>
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http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/819#commentsElectionlaborpublic unionsrecallscott walkerunionswisconsinReflectionsWed, 06 Jun 2012 08:53:03 +0000LibertyUnbound819 at http://www.libertyunbound.comWhy Are We Suddenly Winning?http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/538
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Gary Jason </div>
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<p>Remember the old phrase "consciousness raising?"</p>
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<p>There was a recent miracle in Wisconsin, and it is the kind of miracle that merits some reflection.</p><p>After facing the fury of the public employees for weeks, Scott Walker, Republican governor of Wisconsin, was able to sign into law restrictions on the collective bargaining rights of state employees. This was the bill that the Republicans in the state legislature had managed to pass even while the Democrats in the state senate were hiding out of state, attempting to deny them a quorum).</p><p>It was miraculous enough that the Governor and the Republican legislators hung tough in the face of the union-orchestrated onslaught of confrontational &mdash; nay, hysterical &mdash; demonstrations by spoiled teachers, duped school kids, poseur leftist college students, and union rent-a-goons (all apparently unchecked by sympathetic cops), not to mention a massive ad blitz portraying the Republicans as subhuman brutes bereft of all compassion.</p><p>But after the bill was signed, the unions went to the Left&rsquo;s time-tested Plan B: use the court system to get what you want. And fortuitously for the unions, there was an election for a seat on the state Supreme Court, in which fairly conservative Justice David Prossner was up for reelection. Unions plowed an astounding $3.5 million into defeating Prossner and electing their chosen tool, JoAnne Kloppenberg, who made it clear that if elected she would rule the troublesome law unconstitutional. It was an egregious display of a complete lack of judicial temperament, not to mention intellectual integrity.</p><p>The race promised to be close &mdash; remember, another of the time-tested tools of leftist unions is to use their organizational power and endless dues money to win off-year elections, relying on the fact that the rationally ignorant taxpayer is usually too preoccupied with other things&mdash;such as actually having to work for a living &mdash; to vote in minor elections.</p><p>Initial reports showed that the union stooge had squeaked out a victory &mdash; she even went on TV to crow about it. But then another miracle occurred: during the certification process, County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus discovered that the City of Brookfield&rsquo;s votes had not been counted into the statewide total. When they were, it turned out that Prossner won going away, with a margin large enough that the usual Democratic election-stealing tactics (finding a few mysterious votes that appeared to be cancelled ballots, for example) won&rsquo;t work to reverse it.</p><p>This is a huge setback for organized labor in particular, and the Left in general. Be crystal clear on this: if organized labor can&rsquo;t count on winning an off-year election in a blue state after spending millions of dollars and rallying its myrmidons to march, scream, and vote in lockstep, it is in very profound trouble.</p><p>Why? What accounts for all these developments?</p><p>Several recent stories help us understand why rightist Republicans, usually pathetically lacking in anything remotely resembling electoral savvy and political street-smarts, are beginning to achieve some measure of success in enacting their agenda. The stories have to do with the looming approach of the public choice tipping point &nbsp;&mdash; the point at which rational ignorance ceases to be rational.</p><p>The first is a nice article by libertarian economist and all-around BFB (brilliant French babe) Veronique de Rugy. She brings to our notice the growth of that glorious illustration of the law of unintended consequences, <a href="http://www.american.com/archive/2011/april/slay-this-tax-monster">the AMT</a> (Alternative Minimum Tax).</p><p>The AMT was passed by a hysterical Congress back in 1969, when it was discovered that about 150 wealthy Americans were &mdash; gasp! &mdash; using <em>legal </em>deductions to avoid paying taxes. (Ironically, most were elderly people who had put their money in tax-free municipal bonds, bonds that, of course, fund government.) &nbsp;Under the AMT, certain higher-income taxpayers must file two tax forms, the regular form, and the AMT form. If the latter shows that they owe more than they would if they used the regular form, they have to cough up the difference.</p><div class="pullquote"><p>The Governor and the Republican legislators hung tough in the face of hysterical demonstrations by spoiled teachers, duped school kids, poseur leftist college students, and union rent-a-goons.</p></div><p>The cruel joke on the taxpayer is that the AMT was never indexed for inflation, so as each year passes it molests more and more taxpayers. In fact, the number of hapless filers hit by the AMT rose from a couple of hundred in 1970 to about a half-million in 1979 to 4.5 million in 2009. &nbsp;In that year, Congress had to pass a short-term patch, so that in 2010 the number of taxpayers eligible to be AMT&rsquo;d wouldn&rsquo;t rise to 27 million! No doubt the taxpayers who would be targeted were made aware of this by their accountants, and pressured Congress to stop it.</p><p>The second article is a superb piece by the SAG (smart American guy) Stephen Moore. Moore contends (rightly, in my view) that <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704050204576219073867182108.html">&ldquo;we&rsquo;ve become a nation of takers, not makers.&rdquo;</a> He mentions a number of statistics that illustrate this.</p><p>There are now nearly two government workers for every worker in manufacturing (22.5 million versus 11.5 million). He notes that back in 1960, there were 15 million workers in manufacturing versus only 8.7 million in government. To put this in another way, we have more people working for government &ldquo;than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining, and utilities combined.&rdquo; Almost half of the combined $2.2 trillion that state and municipal governments cost taxpayers every year is spent on public employee pay and benefits, including pensions. (Moore doesn&rsquo;t note the fact that this outlay will soon explode, as the Baby Boomers retire.)</p><p>California now has twice as many government workers as workers in manufacturing. New Jersey has two and a half times as many. Florida and New York stand at about three to one, government to manufacturing. Even more amazing, Iowa and Nebraska &mdash; classic farm states &mdash; now have five times as many government workers as farmers.</p><p>Pointing to recent surveys of college grads, which show that these people would rather work in government than in private industry, Moore makes the devastating point: &ldquo;When 23-year-olds aren&rsquo;t willing to take career risks, we have a real problem on our hands. Sadly, we could end up with a generation of Americans who want to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles.&rdquo;</p><p>A third article illustrates the reason for <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/02/us/02superintendent.html">the attractions of government work</a>. This <em>New York Times </em>piece reports on a growing practice of government workers &mdash; retiring on full pension and immediately going back to work; in effect, double dipping. In true <em>Times </em>fashion, it builds the story around a human sample case, one Carlos Bejarano, who is the superintendent of an Arizona school district of about 7,000 students in grades K through 8.</p><p>In the middle of a fiscal crisis, in which the district is planning to lay off staff and close two schools because of economic hard times, Bejarano will retire, this year, on a pension of $100,000 per annum &mdash; but will continue at his existing job. Oh, by the way, his job pays a modest $130,000 a year, plus health and other benefits, that come to a total of about $150,000 yearly. At one hearing about the school closings, an outraged citizen sputtered out, &ldquo;How dare you?&rdquo;</p><p>Cases like this are legion, and the populace is beginning to know it. Try explaining to the average worker why he is paid a fraction of Mr. Bejarano&rsquo;s wage, and has a 401k instead of a defined-benefit pension, or is even unemployed, while his taxes go to pay some public school administrator what Bejarano makes. Good luck.</p><p>So there you have it. These stories illustrate what I think is driving the increasing boldness of the Republicans. People are becoming ever more aware of the possible increase in their taxes, and there is increasing awareness of how vast government has become, and how often these multitudes of government workers are ridiculously overcompensated. It is this growing awareness that is changing the rules of the game &mdash; changing it from a game that favors &ldquo;progressive&rdquo; liberals to one that just might favor classical liberals.</p> </div>
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&lt;p&gt;Gary Jason is a lecturer in philosophy and a senior editor of Liberty. His book, &lt;em&gt;Dangerous Thoughts&lt;/em&gt;, is available through Amazon.&lt;/p&gt; </div>
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http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/538#commentseducationjobspensionsunionswisconsinReflectionsSun, 17 Apr 2011 01:31:45 +0000LibertyUnbound538 at http://www.libertyunbound.comLosing the Battle, Spinning the Warhttp://www.libertyunbound.com/node/528
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Stephen Cox </div>
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<p>Our linguistic soldiers suffer setbacks in multiple theaters.</p>
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<p>March was a time of judgment on the American official language &mdash; the language spoken by the people considered most qualified to sling words around: politicians, media operatives, public educators of all kinds. The official language was weighed in the balance, and found wanting. It proved grossly unequal to the challenge of such mighty events as the Japanese earthquake, labor unrest in Wisconsin, and the political embarrassments of government radio. And then along came Libya.</p><p>As usual, the commander in chief led the nation into linguistic battle on most of the fronts available; and as usual, he was beaten in every skirmish. About Wisconsin he did what he ordinarily does; he tried to get into the fight, while also trying to stay out of it. A violent proponent of unions, and an eager recipient of union funds, he still hopes to win the electoral votes of all those states that are in financial turmoil because of the demands of public employee unions. So he acknowledged the states&rsquo; budget problems, and then he said, &ldquo;It is wrong to use those budget cuts to vilify workers.&rdquo; A little later, when asked to state Obama&rsquo;s position on the continuing turmoil in Wisconsin, his press agent repeated that inane remark.</p><p>Of course, nobody was <em>vilifying workers, </em>even if you are crazy enough to equate <em>workers</em> with <em>government employees.</em> What some people were doing &mdash; and suddenly, such a lot of people &mdash; was trying to keep the unions that represent people employed by state and local governments from bankrupting their employers. Obama&rsquo;s feckless verbal feint would have turned into a factual rout if some White House correspondent had asked the obvious question: &ldquo;What <em>vilification</em> are you referring to?&rdquo; But nobody seemed able to do that.</p><div class="pullquote"><p>The commander in chief led the nation into linguistic battle on most of the fronts available; and as usual, he was beaten in every skirmish.</p></div><p>Meanwhile, union shock troops were occupying the capitol of Wisconsin, trying to prevent its legislature from voting. These vilified workers caused over seven million dollars of damage. Yet even Fox News&rsquo; Megyn Kelly, a rightwing personality on a rightwing channel, was willing to call the Wisconsin actions &ldquo;peaceful.&rdquo; You see what I mean about the official language not being adequate to the crisis? Suppose I came over to your house with a few thousand friends chanting obscene slogans against you, and we camped in your living room for weeks, attempting to force you to do what we wanted you to do &mdash; would you call that <em>peaceful</em>? Of course not, but only one person in the media, a volunteer bloggist whom Yahoo! News, in a fit of common sense, allowed on its site, made a point like that. Congratulations, bloggist. You have linguistic qualifications that none of the media professionals can equal. But they&rsquo;re the ones who are getting paid.</p><p>Among this country&rsquo;s most influential purveyors of the American official language is National Public Radio. I&rsquo;m calling it that because it is currently attempting to deny its identity as government radio by calling itself by a set of non-referential initials: it just wants to be known as good &lsquo;ol &ldquo;NPR.&rdquo; Well, sorry, alphabetical agency: we all know the smell of a government medium. It comes from the money it tries to cadge from the taxpayers.</p><p>In early March a highly paid government-radio official was caught on video telling some &ldquo;Muslim&rdquo; potential donors that &ldquo;NPR&rdquo; would actually be better off without government help, presumably because it would no longer have to pay any attention to the majority of the American people, whom he suggested were ignorant and stupid and susceptible to the racist propaganda of people who actually, believe it or not, would like a smaller government. He identified the tragedy of America as the fact that its educated elite (clearly typified by himself) was so small and uninfluential. Those were the views that Mr. Ron Schiller, senior vice president of National Public Radio, expressed concerning the citizens of the United States, who (perhaps tragically) put the &ldquo;N&rdquo; in &ldquo;NPR.&rdquo;</p><div class="pullquote"><p>Suppose I came over to your house with a few thousand friends chanting obscene slogans against you, and we camped in your living room for weeks, attempting to force you to do what we wanted you to do &mdash; would you call that <em>peaceful</em>?</p></div><p>Schiller was forced to resign immediately. His brief public statement assesses his behavior in this way: &ldquo;While the meeting I participated in turned out to be a ruse, I made statements during the course of the meeting that are counter to NPR&rsquo;s values and also not reflective of my own beliefs. I offer my sincere apology to those I offended.&rdquo;</p><p>Again we see the limitations of the official language, which proved utterly incapable of specifying <em>what </em>went wrong with Mr. Schiller, <em>who </em>might be offended by his remarks, or <em>why </em>anybody might be offended. In short, the official language was incapable of answering any question that anyone who read his statement would probably ask. And it created new and damaging questions: <em>Why </em>did you <em>make statements that were</em> <em>not reflective of your own beliefs &mdash; </em>that is, <em>lie?</em> By the way, <em>what are your beliefs? </em>Do you actually believe that other Americans are smart but you are dumb, yet for some reason you keep maintaining the opposite? If so, how does that happen?<em>What were you thinking, anyway? </em>But no one in the high-class media found the words to ask such simple questions.</p><p>Now we come to the terrible events in Japan. Again, Obama was in the vanguard of our linguistic forces. And again . . . Here&rsquo;s what he said about the earthquake and tsunami, on March 11 &mdash; in prepared remarks, presumably edited by numerous White House word wizards, who were struggling to get exactly the right tone. &ldquo;This,&rdquo; Obama said, &ldquo;is a potentially catastrophic disaster.&rdquo;</p><p>Gosh, this thing is so <em>bad</em>, something really <em>bad</em> may happen.</p><p>When the president is attacked and captured by his own language, what can we expect of his assistant priests, the writers and readers of the &ldquo;news&rdquo; media? The answer is, Even worse. And we got it.</p><p>Particularly impressive was the horror-movie approach, with the Japanese cast as Godzilla: &ldquo;Operators at the Fukushima Daiichi plant&#39;s Unit 1 scrambled ferociously to tamp down heat and pressure inside the reactor&rdquo; (AP report, March 11). I have trouble picturing anyone <em>tamping </em>down <em>heat </em>or<em>pressure</em>, but it&rsquo;s even harder for me to picture someone doing it <em>ferociously, </em>unless that someone is a monster trying to rescue its offspring from the accursed humans&rsquo; nuclear experiments.</p><p>But maybe the <em>ferocious</em> beings were actually the talking heads of American TV. On the selfsame day, March 11, Fox News&rsquo; late-night guy was calling the earthquake and tsunami &ldquo;one of the worst natural disasters in the history of mankind.&rdquo; Fox News&rsquo; Rick Folbaum called it &ldquo;the fifth worst earthquake in the history of earthquakes, folks.&rdquo; Yet again, the official language just isn&rsquo;t up to the task. It ought to be able to distinguish between &ldquo;the hundred years since earthquake records have been scientifically kept&rdquo; and &ldquo;the history of earthquakes&rdquo; or &ldquo;the history of mankind,&rdquo; but evidently it can&rsquo;t. Under communism, hundreds of thousands of people in China lost their lives in natural disasters &mdash; but we have no words to speak of them, do we? Or maybe, just maybe, we never read a book, so we don&rsquo;t know nothin&rsquo; &lsquo;bout things like that. In either case, the problem lies with words. We can&rsquo;t use them, and we can&rsquo;t read them either.</p><p>After Folbaum made his immortal declaration, his colleague, Marianne Rafferty, consoled the audience by promising, &ldquo;We will keep everyone up-to-dated.&rdquo; Would anyone who had ever read a book&mdash;I mean a real book, with real words&mdash;say a thing like that? What would you have to be paid to make such a statement before an audience of educated people, or even just people?</p><p>The worst thing is that words are related, in certain ways, to thoughts; so if you don&rsquo;t have thoughts . . . Some examples:</p><p>&ldquo;Is Japan getting the assistance it needs?&rdquo; That&rsquo;s the question that Wolf Blitzer asked the Japanese ambassador to the United States (March 12, CNN). I thought it was a little strange that Japan, one of the richest and most technologically advanced nations on the planet, should be the object of that question. But never mind. In reply, the ambassador noted, somewhat vaguely, that his prime minister had ordered one-fourth of the nation&rsquo;s armed forces to help the people currently starving a moderate distance north of Tokyo. That apparently satisfied Blitzer. He didn&rsquo;t say what you would have said: &ldquo;What! Why isn&rsquo;t he mobilizing the entire army?&rdquo; He didn&rsquo;t say what you would have expected <em>him</em> to say: &ldquo;Wait a minute! What&rsquo;s your God damned army for, anyhow? We can get our correspondents into the disaster zone &mdash; why can&rsquo;t you get your army in? And if you can&rsquo;t, why don&rsquo;t you air-drop supplies? In short, Mr. Ambassador, what the <em>hell </em>are you talking about?&rdquo; But I guess Blitzer couldn&rsquo;t think of those questions. After all, he&rsquo;s merely one of America&rsquo;s most famous interviewers.</p><div class="pullquote"><p>Marianne Rafferty consoled the audience by promising, &ldquo;We will keep everyone up-to-dated.&rdquo; Would anyone who had ever read a book&mdash;I mean a real book, with real words&mdash;say a thing like that?</p></div><p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s the sense that they&rsquo;re in this together, and they&rsquo;re just trying to get along as best they can.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s what CNN&rsquo;s Anderson Cooper said on March 14, describing Japanese people waiting hours for government water, only to have an official tell them that the government had run out of water and they would have to wait an undetermined number of additional hours in line. He liked the way the victims remained stolidly in that line. He thought it was good that they didn&rsquo;t complain. Yes, in subsequent days of reporting, he did begin doing what any normal information-processor would have done right away: he criticized the Japanese government for its lies and incompetence, at least about <em>the lurking threat that we all fear, </em>nuclear reactors. But he never questioned his favorable view of the people&rsquo;s passivity (the media word was &ldquo;calm&rdquo;). It just wasn&rsquo;t in him to make the connection between the people&rsquo;s passivity and the government&rsquo;s incompetence. Again, he didn&rsquo;t have the words. I assume that he didn&rsquo;t have the thoughts, either.</p><p>Here&rsquo;s another instance. &ldquo;You wonder how any government could deal with such a thing,&rdquo; intoned Shepard Smith, a Fox News figure momentarily stationed in Japan, on the evening of March 15. He was referring to the combination of the nuclear issue and the disaster relief issue, both of which the Japanese government was supposed to &ldquo;deal with.&rdquo; Personally, I didn&rsquo;t &ldquo;wonder&rdquo; about that. I suspect that you didn&rsquo;t either. Any responsible government could find out how to <em>deal with</em> such problems<em>.</em> There are known procedures for addressing dangers in nuclear power plants, and disaster relief is not an unknown science. This wasn&rsquo;t World War II. But maybe the Japanese official class is like our own &mdash; so tied up in its own linguistic incapacities that it can&rsquo;t formulate an efficient thought.</p><p>Now to Libya. I&rsquo;ve recently written <a href="http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/504">two</a> <a href="http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/514">reflections</a> about Libya for this journal, so I can hit the ground running. What everyone with a brain is still laughing about is President Obama&rsquo;s address to the nation on March 28. Generally, watchers identified the most risible part of the speech as Obama&rsquo;s denial that he intended to get rid of Qaddafi. Admittedly, he wanted Qaddafi gone; yet, he said, &ldquo;broadening our mission to include regime change would be a mistake.&rdquo; He couldn&rsquo;t find the words to say &ldquo;ousting Qaddafi,&rdquo; so he said &ldquo;regime change.&rdquo; If you&rsquo;ve got the magic decoder, you&rsquo;ll understand this. But you still may not understand his policy.</p><p>By denying his lust for <em>regime change</em>, he costumed himself as a dove. Unfortunately, that made the hawks wonder whether he really, truly, wanted Qaddafi out. (They&rsquo;d heard double-talk before.) So on the next day, he back went on TV, to express his satisfaction that the members of Qaddafi&rsquo;s inner circle supposedly &ldquo;understand that the noose is tightening.&rdquo; Ah! Now we are the executioner with the noose. So both the hawks and the doves are happy, right? Well, maybe not.</p><div class="pullquote"><p>The vocabulary is missing. The official language has no words for &ldquo;war,&rdquo; &ldquo;making war,&rdquo; or anything else that Obama was obviously doing.</p></div><p>You can tell when somebody is really dumb, or is really desperate for the attention of people in Washington: that person is eager to go on TV and defend nonsense like this, which nobody else could possibly defend. Thus Bill Richardson, once Clinton&rsquo;s ambassador to Monica Lewinsky, then governor of New Mexico, now television expert on constitutional law, informing CNN that Obama was acting purely in order &ldquo;to avert a humanitarian disaster&rdquo; when he started bombing Libya. Asked whether the president shouldn&rsquo;t have consulted with someone in Congress before going to war, Richardson said there was no need: &ldquo;This is not a war powers situation.&rdquo;</p><p>You see! You see! There it is again. The vocabulary is missing. The official language has no words for &ldquo;war,&rdquo; &ldquo;making war,&rdquo; or anything else that Obama was obviously doing. So we are forced to watch this strange, slow shifting of vehicles around the used car lot, as political salesmen try to find some piece of junk that the suckers will buy: &ldquo;this is not<em> a war powers situation.</em> &rdquo;</p><p>Imagine Libyan planes and rockets bombarding the New Jersey coast. Would that be <em>a war powers situation? </em>Would it turn into one if its goal were <em>regime change?</em> Or would it still be a mission to <em>avert a humanitarian disaster, </em>and therefore immune from legislative review?</p><p>But here&rsquo;s the real stuff. In his address to the nation on March 28, President Obama tried to calculate the scale of the <em>humanitarian disaster </em>he was trying to <em>avert</em>, without the help of long (or even short) consultations with Congress<em>:</em> &ldquo;We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi &mdash; a city nearly the size of Charlotte &mdash; could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.&quot;</p><p>I know, I know &mdash; you can&rsquo;t resist the unintentional humor of &ldquo;a city nearly the size of Charlotte,&rdquo; as if anybody knew, or cared, how large Charlotte (North Carolina?) might be. The desired impression was: <em>Whoa!</em> <em>That big, dude? Then I guess we gotta go to war! </em>The real impression was: <em>Not!</em></p><p>But there are so many other things to notice:</p><p>The image that simply makes no sense: try to picture a <em>massacre </em>that <em>reverberates.</em></p><p>The modesty that presidents get whenever they know they&rsquo;re in trouble, and &ldquo;I&rdquo; just naturally transforms itself to &ldquo;we.&rdquo; (Were YOU <em>waiting? </em>Did YOU <em>know?</em>)</p><p>The Victorian prissiness of &ldquo;suffer a massacre.&rdquo;</p><p>The pathological specificity of &ldquo;one more day&rdquo; and &ldquo;nearly the size.&rdquo;</p><p>The moral stupidity of &ldquo;stained the conscience of the world,&rdquo; which literally means that if some bad thing happens, everyone in the world becomes guilty of it. (All right; you think I&rsquo;m just being sarcastic. Then tell me what the phrase actually means.)</p><p>And finally, the breakdown in thought and grammar evident in the goofy progression of verbs: &ldquo;If we waited . . . Benghazi could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated.&rdquo; To see what&rsquo;s happened here, insert some normal words into the various grammatical slots. Like this: &ldquo;I knew that if I waited, you could write me a check that would have made me rich.&rdquo; Huh?</p><p>Anyone who knew grammar would have fixed that one up, but as we know, Obama, the world-famous author, has no knowledge of grammar, never having mastered even the like-as distinction, let alone verb progression. But examine his inability to distinguish the meanings of &ldquo;could&rdquo; and &ldquo;would.&rdquo; The president was forced to admit that he had made a decision, that what he did wasn&rsquo;t inevitable, and that he wasn&rsquo;t, like Yahweh, absolutely certain about the future. That&rsquo;s how &ldquo;could&rdquo; got into that abominable sentence. Yet at the same time, he wanted to imply that he was certain about the future: why else could, or might, &ldquo;we&rdquo; have made the decision we made? So he put in &ldquo;would.&rdquo;</p><p>And that solved his problem. So far as he could tell.</p><p>Don&rsquo;t blame him. He speaks only the official language.</p> </div>
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&lt;p&gt;Stephen Cox is editor of &lt;em&gt;Liberty&lt;/em&gt;, and a professor of literature at the University of California San Diego. His recent books include &lt;em&gt;The Big House: Image and Reality of the American Prison&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;American Christianity: The Continuing Revolution&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; </div>
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http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/528#commentsjapanlibyaobamatsunamiunionswarwisconsinWord WatchTue, 05 Apr 2011 03:26:10 +0000LibertyUnbound528 at http://www.libertyunbound.comThis Could Be the Start of Something Bighttp://www.libertyunbound.com/node/509
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Gary Jason </div>
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<p>Why the states can do things that the feds will not.</p>
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<p>The first battle of the 2012 campaign has just ended &mdash; and it doesn&rsquo;t bode well for the Democrats, in the short run at the state level, or in the long run at the federal level.</p><p>The location was Wisconsin, historically a stronghold of organized labor, the Democratic Party, and the Left generally. But the state has been trending rightward in recent elections, and last year it elected a Republican, Scott Walker, as governor, and a majority of Republicans to the state legislature. Interestingly, however, these are not the sort of Republicans you would expect from a somewhat purple state &mdash; RINOs (or Republicans in Name Only) &mdash; but honest-to-God RCCs (Republicanos con Cojones).</p><p>Governor Scott Walker clearly has a pair. During his campaign, Walker made it clear that he was serious about reducing spending, especially the outrageous compensation packages that public employee unions had negotiated in sweetheart deals with past Democratic administrations. The pattern in Wisconsin was similar to what happened in most other states: a vicious cycle of crony unionism. Public employees unionize, use their massive dues to elect sympathetic politicians, then in bargaining with those politicians receive lavish compensation packages. This enables the unions to collect even more dues, elect even more sympathetic politicians, and get even more of the taxpayers&rsquo; dollars. It&rsquo;s very convenient &mdash; for the unions.</p><p>In the 2008 election cycle, unions (now predominantly unions of government employees) <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/02/public-unions-force-taxpayers-fund-democrats">gave about $400 million to Democratic campaigns</a>, especially Obama&rsquo;s. Heck, AFSCME (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the biggest government workers&rsquo; union) alone gave the Dems $90 million during the last (i.e., 2010) election cycle.</p><div class="pullquote"><p>The public choice tipping point occurs when the pain inflicted on citizens by the rentseekers who have captured a government agency becomes too great to ignore.</p></div><p>So the money that taxpayers pay in salaries to the public employees provides (in the form of union dues) the funds that elect politicians who will in turn raise taxes and give more money to the public employees (and hence their unions). The public, rationally ignorant &mdash; that is, having better things than state politics to worry about (such as earning an honest living) &mdash; are typically oblivious to the corruption, until the deficits and taxes become outrageously high. That point, which you might call &ldquo;the public choice tipping point,&rdquo; occurs when the pain inflicted on the citizens (in increased taxes, increased costs of compliance, or decreased liberty) by the rentseekers who have captured a government agency becomes too great to ignore.</p><p>Perhaps the classic illustration was the transition to the all-volunteer army. We kept the draft going from World War II through the Korean War, and long past. It took the debacle that was Vietnam and the student protests it aroused to get the government to change from conscription to a volunteer services model.</p><p>Governor Scott took office with the state deficit already at $137 million, but <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/22/wisconsin-governor-warns-layoff-notices/">slated to rise to $3.6 billion in the next two years</a>. As he promised during his campaign, he introduced legislation that requires the state employees to contribute more to their health and pension funds. Specifically, his law requires public workers to pay 12.6% of their healthcare insurance premiums from their pay, and contribute 5.8% of their pay to the pension system &mdash; an amount that is still quite low compared to similar amounts in private industry.</p><p>In so doing, he went to the heart of the state&rsquo;s fiscal woes. The public sector unions had sweet compensation packages, ones that include not only high pay but also incredible perks (tenure, virtually free healthcare, and pension plans requiring little employee contribution). The average compensation for Wisconsin public school teachers is <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/wisconsins-teachers-betraying-students-robbing-taxpayers/2/">over $101,000 per year</a> &mdash; for essentially eight months of work.</p><p>But Walker also proposed to eliminate the power of government workers (except firefighters and police officers) to bargain collectively for non-salary compensation, and eliminate the state&rsquo;s role of &ldquo;enforcer&rdquo; in collecting dues from employees for the union. His legislation further required annual union elections, in which a majority (as opposed to a mere plurality) of workers must approve the union.</p><p>Here, Walker showed real understanding of the problem: if he just asked for increased employee contributions to their health and pension plans, the unions might have gone along this year, but the minute the public&rsquo;s attention was diverted, they would just get those concessions rescinded, especially if union dues elected a Democratic governor. Government worker unions fully understand rational ignorance.</p><div class="pullquote"><p>A recent report shows that fully two-thirds of eighth-grade students in Wisconsin&rsquo;s public schools can&rsquo;t read proficiently.</p></div><p>Initially, the unions fought all the provisions of the law, but as the public learned about the lavish compensation packages government workers receive, public sympathy evaporated. Also responsible for reducing taxpayer sympathy was the report that emerged, just as the controversy was getting intense, that<a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/two-thirds-wisconsin-public-school-8th-g"> fully two-thirds of eighth-grade students in Wisconsin&rsquo;s public schools can&rsquo;t read proficiently</a>. According to the US Department of Education, in last year&rsquo;s National Assessment of Educational Progress tests only 2% of Wisconsin eighth-graders scored as &ldquo;advanced&rdquo; in reading, and only 32% as &ldquo;proficient.&rdquo; The remaining 66% were <em>below proficient</em> (44% rated &ldquo;basic,&rdquo; 22% &ldquo;below basic&rdquo;).</p><p>The taxpayers of Wisconsin have paid exorbitantly for this laughably lousy quality of education. They pay more per public-school student than any other Midwestern state.</p><p>So the unions modified their demands. They said they would agree to increased contributions to the healthcare and pension plans; they claimed that they objected only to the loss of collective bargaining &ldquo;rights&rdquo; &mdash; allegedly &ldquo;natural rights&rdquo; as fundamental as free speech. And with their PR plan in place, they went to war.</p><p>The unions employed all their classic tactics. Of course, teachers called in sick <em>en masse,</em> cancelling classes and snarling the schools. There were weeks of massive demonstrations, with as many as 100,000 demonstrators on the streets of Madison, occasionally closing the capitol down, with the usual chanting, screaming and pushing, all aimed at intimidating Walker and the Republicans into submission. Many of the demonstrators were paid for and bused in by the unions in a classic display of &ldquo;astroturfing.&rdquo; The protestors were egged on by the usual repellent, aged leftist icons, from Jesse Jackson to Michael Moore to Susan Sarandon. And the unions paid for endless ads aimed at demonizing Walker and the Republicans in the legislature.</p><p>In the meantime, the Democratic state senators left the state, in order to deny the Republicans a quorum for considering the governor&rsquo;s legislation.</p><p>Also in the fight &mdash; while of course pretending to be above it all &mdash; was President Obama. He clearly viewed Wisconsin as the first battle in his reelection campaign, and promptly accused Walker of &ldquo;assaulting&rdquo; workers&rsquo; rights.</p><p>Against this formidable array of foes and this well-strategized campaign, Walker stood firm. After an extended period of what seemed like stalemate, the Republicans figured out how to separate the essential restrictions on unions and make them legislation not requiring a special quorum. They passed the legislation, and Walker signed it into law. The deed was done.</p><p>Walker took a major hit in his poll numbers, yet his victory should worry the Dems about the next election, and elections thereafter, at least at the state level.</p><p>One cause for worry is the fact that in the battle of Wisconsin the unions had to expend a lot of money &mdash; for ads, for demonstrations, for agitprop in general &mdash; cash that now isn&rsquo;t available for the 2012 election cycle. Second, they face a loss of membership. Average yearly union dues are in the range of $700 to $1,000 in Wisconsin, and now that the government won&rsquo;t be deducting those dues, members may decide they no longer want to pay. One suspects that fear of lost members and members&rsquo; dues is what really drove the unions to fight so furiously.</p><div class="pullquote"><p>Many of the demonstrators in Madison were paid for and bused in by the unions in a classic display of &ldquo;astroturfing.&rdquo;</p></div><p>If similar battles occur in other states, such losses will bite the unions hard. And it may well happen. After all, if the economy in Wisconsin responds well to Walker&rsquo;s actions, he will rise again in the polls, and that would encourage other governors to follow his lead. Indeed, similar battles have already been going on elsewhere. In Ohio, Republican Governor Kasich is trying to limit public employee bargaining &ldquo;rights&rdquo; and is facing demonstrations because of it. In Indiana, Republican legislators have introduced right-to-work legislation that will apply to all unions, and they also saw their Democratic colleagues walk out the door. (While Republican Governor Mitch Daniels doesn&rsquo;t support this right-to-work movement by his colleagues in the legislature, he did manage to get a law restricting the right of public employee unions to bargain collectively back in 2005).</p><p>Republican leaders at the state level &mdash; in the face of burgeoning state budget deficits now totaling about $125 billion for the 50 states &mdash; seem to appreciate the urgent need for measures that limit the power of unions to game the system. The three most effective measures appear to be laws limiting the collective bargaining privileges of public employee unions, right-to-work laws allowing all workers the right not to be forced to support their unions, and paycheck protection laws that require unions to get the explicit consent of workers before using their union dues for political purposes. These types of laws are kryptonite to the unions.</p><p>All of this raises an interesting question. Why are Republican leaders suddenly so bold at the state level, but still so timid at the federal level? Why are some state Republicans willing to address growing deficits in their states, even at the cost of taking on the special interest behemoths that are the unions, while Republicans in Washington seem reluctant to address the federal deficit, which dwarfs into insignificance the state deficits?</p><p>A number of reasons explain the disparity. First, the 2010 Republican electoral triumph was manifested more on the state than the federal level. Yes, the GOP took back the House of Representatives, but (because of some unwise voter choices in the primaries, and the large numerical advantage that the Democrats had enjoyed in the Senate before the election) failed to get even a tie in the upper house. You can&rsquo;t stop a devoutly leftist president &mdash; one willing to use the formidable power of the executive branch to keep increasing the size and regulatory scope of the federal government &mdash; when you don&rsquo;t control Congress.</p><p>Second, most state constitutions require budgets to be balanced, whereas the federal constitution has no such requirement. This means that to handle the rapidly rising costs of public employee salaries, healthcare expenses, and pension payouts, most states can only raise taxes or float bonds. But taxpayers are already financially stretched to the limit, and bonds are costing more as investors find out how shaky state and municipal finances really are. The recent revelations that states and municipalities already have taken on $3 trillion in bonded indebtedness, and are about $3.5 trillion underfunded in pension and healthcare liabilities, have really hurt the market for muni bonds.</p><div class="pullquote"><p>The federal government has a seductive option not open to the states: just print more money. This is of course precisely what the Fed is doing right now.</p></div><p>Add to this the possibility &mdash; dare I say the likelihood? &mdash; of a bankruptcy in a big city (my favorite candidate is my hometown, Los Angeles). In that event, or the event that a state defaults on its bonds (my favorite candidate is my home state, California), the market for muni bonds would dry up immediately, and with it the ability of states to borrow money at reasonable rates.</p><p>The third major difference between the challenges confronting state-level and federal-level Republican leaders has to do with competition. If the politicians in a state jack up taxes to solve a budget shortfall, the productive people (aka taxpayers) and businesses can and will move elsewhere.</p><p>This has already had an effect even in such historically high-tax states as New Jersey and New York, where there is now a broad awareness of how many of their productive people and businesses have fled to low-tax havens such as Florida and Texas. The old phrase &ldquo;Gone to Texas&rdquo; is now a frightening motto now to the high-tax states.</p><p>But the federal government faces no such competition. If I leave California for Florida, the cultural adjustment is minor. To move from America to another nation takes a major adjustment, one far too expensive for most people to make. And most other nations where American might otherwise want to live have equally statist governments.</p><p>The fourth major difference lies in the power to print money. Faced with deficits, states have only three options: borrow money, cut spending, or raise taxes. But the federal government has a seductive fourth option: just print more money. This is of course precisely what the Fed is doing right now. It allows all politicians at the federal level to avoid cutting programs and thereby incurring the wrath of special interests.</p><p>There is a fifth difference, and it is the most important. On the state level, the Republicans are moving to cut lavish government worker benefits, which are the major cause of the state budget problems, because most citizens are not themselves government workers. The other major choices &mdash; raising taxes and cutting programs &mdash; are politically unpalatable. Try convincing the average voter that we need to eliminate half the firefighters so that the few who are left can get lavish pay and retire at age 50 on a $250,000 pension for life.</p><p>But on the federal level, the programs most responsible for bankrupting this nation are Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, not federal employee compensation (or defense spending or discretionary spending in general). Those programs are still popular among Americans, even Tea Party members. A recent poll reported in <em>Policy Review </em>is telling on this point. If you ask Americans where we should cut, <a href="http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/64061">the results are dismal</a>. On Social Security, only 9% of the respondent&rsquo;s would cut it, compared to 84% who would rather increase it or keep it the same. Medicare? Only 12% would cut it, compared to 82% who want to increase it or keep it the same. Medicaid gets only 15% support for cutting, versus 78% who want to increase it or keep it the same. About the only federal project that Americans want to cut is foreign aid.</p><p>So in the short term, it is doubtful that Republicans will step up to cut these programs, and if they did, they would probably be hurt politically. But long term, the fiscal crisis that many states are now facing will hit the federal government. The three programs I identified are estimated to face long-term underfunding to the tune of over $100 trillion. As each year passes, their deficits will only balloon. At some point, rational ignorance concerning them will tip into rational knowledge &mdash; to the grave damage of the political party that created, expanded, and repeatedly campaigned on them.</p> </div>
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&lt;p&gt;Gary Jason is an academic philosopher and a senior editor of &lt;em&gt;Liberty&lt;/em&gt;. His recent books, &lt;em&gt;Disturbing Thoughts: Unorthodox Writings on Timely Issues &lt;/em&gt;and &lt;em&gt;Philosophic Thoughts: Essays on Logic and Philosophy &lt;/em&gt;are both available through Amazon.&lt;/p&gt; </div>
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http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/509#commentsbusinesscongressdeficitFeaturesfederalstatesunionswisconsinMon, 21 Mar 2011 03:36:26 +0000LibertyUnbound509 at http://www.libertyunbound.comThe Tail Slapping the Doghttp://www.libertyunbound.com/node/503
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Steve Murphy </div>
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<p>Something to consider, while watching the news from Wisconsin.</p>
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<p>I grew up in a blue-collar world listening to jokes and snide remarks about government workers. They were uttered frequently by my father, and the fathers of most of my friends, especially during tax season. I came to perceive that government, at all levels, was riddled with chumps, lackeys, and dullards &mdash; people who couldn&rsquo;t make it in the private sector but found a home in the lackadaisical workplace of government.</p><p>It was tacitly assumed that public employees earned less money than their private sector counterparts and that &ldquo;psychic income&rdquo; explained their willingness to do so. Psychic income has been defined as &ldquo;something apart from money that you get from your job, and which gives you emotional satisfaction such as a feeling of being powerful or important.&rdquo; Anyone who has dealt with government bureaucrats (from IRS agents to building inspectors and DMV clerks) can attest to its allure. My father probably would have described psychic income as a negative salary differential that gave this army of self-important, insecure underachievers a pass. That is, as long as they made less money, their shoddy (good enough for government) work could be tolerated.</p><p>That was back in the late 1960s. The Great Society was shifting into high gear. Big government was booming, and the demand for government workers was exploding. In those auspicious days, the job of many public servants was to invent jobs for more public servants. As government revenues continued (1969 to the present) to grow more than 15 times faster than median income, additional public servants were needed just to spend the extra tax money.</p><div class="pullquote"><p>During the recession, when nongovernment workers were losing jobs and taking pay cuts, the government was hiring and giving out raises.</p></div><p>But my father&rsquo;s suspicions about the negative salary differential were partly wrong. Federal civil servants were already making more money than their private sector brethren. And they, as well as state and local public servants, were on track to make much more. I didn&rsquo;t have the heart to tell my father that the lower salary &mdash; the only redeeming characteristic of the shiftless and slothful government workforce &mdash; was an illusion. And the grudging tolerance of his generation was being augmented by the unwitting generosity of mine to unleash relentless public sector growth. My generation rewarded public sector workers with unprecedented income &mdash; both real (salary and benefits) and psychic (power and importance), sweetening the deal with unprecedentedjob security. The tail began wagging the dog.</p><p>Today, the average federal civilian worker earns twice as much in wages and benefits as the average worker in the private sector ($123,049 vs $61,051, annually). The benefits (healthcare, sick days, vacation time, retirement plans, etc.) are profligately generous, as are the taxpayer contributions that pay for them. For example, in 2007, state and local governments paid an average of $3.04 an hour toward each employee&#39;s retirement; private employers paid only $0.92/hour. And, in recent years, the pace (of both hiring and wage increases) has accelerated. For example, when the recession started, the Department of Transportation had only one person with a salary of $170,000 or more. That number has now reached 1,690. Defense Department civilian employees earning $150,000 or more increased from 1,868 in December 2007 to 10,100 in June 2009.</p><p>We are told (by President Obama and many others) that such obscenely generous compensation is required for attracting the best and the brightest to run government programs. Just think of the mess that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Postal Service, Amtrak, public housing, education, etc. would be in if managed by less competent professionals. And who could do a better job fighting the wars against poverty, drugs, cancer, AIDS, etc. than the people presently employed? With successes such as these, no wonder they have moved on to protecting us against such menaces as trans fats, sugar, secondhand smoke, bicycles, and toys (the lead-painted ones from China and the obesity-inducing ones from McDonald&rsquo;s).</p><p>And since we must be regulated in both good times and bad, public service is a recession-proof industry. During the recent recession, the federal government added 192,700 jobs (+ 9.8%). State and local governments added a paltry 33,000 (+ 0.2%), but the private sector lost 7.3 million (-6.3%). The average federal government salary increased 6.6%; the average state and local government salary increased 3.9%. To summarize, during the recession, when nongovernment workers were losing jobs and taking pay cuts, the government was hiring and giving out raises.</p><p>It has reached a point where even big-government advocates have become appalled. For example, Mort Zuckerman, billionaire businessman and generous contributor to the Obama campaign, has recently discovered that &ldquo;<em>public workers have become a privileged class &mdash; an elite who live better than their private-sector counterparts. Public servants have become the public&#39;s masters.&quot;</em></p><p>It is of no small significance that the big gainers in the government hiring binge are regulators, lawyers, and public health and safety experts. They are the most annoying of public servants. Operating as social engineers, and under the assumption that without their guidance we (individuals, families, and businesses of all types and sizes) will make bad decisions, they serve two principal purposes: (A) ensuring that we obey every silly law with childlike compliance, and (B) writing more silly laws. This is the tail slapping the dog.</p><div class="pullquote"><p>Feckless public servants lavished enormous retirement benefits on themselves, used taxpayer money for payroll contributions, managed to come up $7 trillion short, and now expect taxpayers to foot the bill.</p></div><p>Much of the sting from the slap comes from their colossal ineptitude. They are simply terrible at what they do. The vigilant financial regulators who protected us from the subprime mortgage debacle are a case in point. They include the elite that was running HUD, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the SEC (whose crack securities experts were downloading porn while credit default swaps and Bernie Madoff ran amok). Their predecessors were equally inadequate in preventing the S&amp;L crisis, the junk bond fiasco, the Enron and WorldCom scandals, and the dotcom bubble.</p><p>It should be no great surprise, therefore, that our public masters running government pension funds have reached no higher level of competence. According to a recent report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute, federal pension plans now have unfunded liabilities exceeding $1.6 trillion. Unfunded state and local pension liabilities are estimated at $3.6 trillion. With healthcare benefits added in, state and local government unfunded retirement liabilities could be as large as $5.2 trillion. Consequently, our children face a huge future slap in the form of a tax bill approaching $7 trillion. To summarize: feckless public servants lavished enormous retirement benefits on themselves, used taxpayer money for payroll contributions (at a rate three times that of theprivate sector), managed to come up $7 trillion short, and, instead of going to jail, now expect taxpayers to foot the bill.</p><p>Then there is Public Service Recognition Week (PSRW), a nationwide campaign honoring public servants and educating citizens about the sacrifices they make while serving the nation. Federal, state and local public servants spend the first week of every May honoring themselves and bragging about the terrific jobs they are doing. They have exhibits showcasing &ldquo;the innovative and quality work performed by public employees.&rdquo; They even have parades &ldquo;recognizing and thanking their unsung heroes.&rdquo; This is the tail slapping the dog with disdain.</p><p>Public servants have come a long way from the banal, ambitionless, unproductive horde of my father&#39;s generation.They are now grossly overpaid, insidiously more powerful, and routinely unaccountable for bad, often abysmal, performance. No doubt most are good people with good intentions, some making legitimate sacrifices. I would go to a parade honoring most policemen, firefighters, teachers, and emergency workers. But there should also be a parade ridiculing those whose malfeasance, indolence, or avarice has failed the public and contaminated the perception of civil service. Regrettably, such a parade could not be held; it would last well over the week allotted.</p><p>Today there are simply too many public servants &mdash; even good ones. With staggering deficits and staggering public debt, we can no longer afford them. Public resentment deepens the more their compensation is scrutinized, as all levels of government begin trying to cut their budgets. Most are overpaid, especially at the federal level. And today&#39;s administrators, regulators, inspectors, social engineers, and the like have painted a disturbing &quot;public masters&quot; portrait of themselves. Furthermore, psychic income as a reward for sacrifice is a thing of the past. As public sector payrolls expand during private sector contraction, it&#39;s difficult for taxpayers to see the sacrifice. Public servants have become the &quot;haves,&quot; and taxpayers, who pay their salaries, have become the &quot;have-nots.&quot; Psychic cost &mdash; the economic burden of the government workforce &mdash; is a more realistic concept.</p><p>From 1787 through the 1920s, federal government spending didn&rsquo;t exceed 4% of GDP, except in wartime. It has now reached 25% of GDP. Combined federal, state, and local government spending has reached 43% of GDP, and the average taxpayer has to work from January 1 to the middle of each April to pay for this largesse. But even that is not enough. In recent years, federal spending has exceeded tax revenue. It has taken an unprecedented leap since 2008, producing today&#39;s massive annual budget deficit of $1.5 trillion. To pay off this deficit, the average taxpayer would have to work until mid-May &mdash;and consequently have to miss the Public Service Recognition Week parades.</p><p>quot;public masters</p> </div>
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Steve Murphy is a retired missile defense systems engineer and software developer living on top of Green Mountain in Huntsville AL, where he does a little consulting, plays the stock market and writes — mostly about economics, science, and American life. He can be contacted at sfm@hiwaay.net. </div>
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http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/503#commentsFeaturesgovernmentpensionsunionswisconsinMon, 14 Mar 2011 02:05:47 +0000LibertyUnbound503 at http://www.libertyunbound.comV.I.P. Treatmenthttp://www.libertyunbound.com/node/500
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S.H. Chambers </div>
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<p><span class="inline inline-left"><img alt="" class="image image-_original " height="311" src="http://libertyunbound.com/sites/files/images/chambers-publicworkers_1.jpg" title="" width="400" /></span></p> </div>
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&lt;p&gt;S.H. Chambers is a cartoonist whose books &lt;em&gt;Mock Hypocrisies&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Zeitgeist Kebab&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;Entertaining Blasphemies&lt;/em&gt; are available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://shchambers.com&quot;&gt;shchambers.com&lt;/a&gt;. Over the last twenty years, thousands of his cartoons have appeared in &lt;em&gt;Liberty&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;National Review&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Mouth&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;Bostonia&lt;/em&gt;, among others.&lt;/p&gt; </div>
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http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/500#commentsjobsunionswisconsinToonsFri, 11 Mar 2011 02:46:07 +0000LibertyUnbound500 at http://www.libertyunbound.comDefining Democracy Downhttp://www.libertyunbound.com/node/492
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Stephen Cox </div>
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<p>Our modern-day democrats skip the theory and go straight to demanding what they want, good and hard.</p>
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<p>The subject this time is babies, dictators, and democracy.</p><p>Here&rsquo;s how it fits together. Since the last Word Watch, the Islamic world has been convulsed by revolutions and attempted revolutions. The American media have responded as they usually respond &mdash; with the dumbest kind of coverage imaginable, intended for the edification of the dummies, the babies, that they believe the rest of us to be.</p><p>Example: on February 22, Fox News anchorman Shepard Smith expressed amazement at the fact that Muammar Qaddafi (the Man of a Thousand Spellings), who has ruled Libya for 42 years and who had, at that point, been besieged by protestors for about two days, had not yet surrendered his power. This, to Smith, was &ldquo;unprecedented,&rdquo; shocking, disgusting! What could it mean? When would Qaddafi quit? We&rsquo;re waiting here!</p><p>Smith&rsquo;s attitude was merely an elongation of attitudes already manifested by his colleagues at CNN and the FCC-regulated networks, not to mention the White House. We&rsquo;re tapping our fingers . . . still tapping . . . <em>still </em>tapping. Now we&#39;re tapping our feet as well. Listen, bub, are you gonna quit in time for the six o&rsquo;clock news or what?</p><p>Well, how dumb can you get? How uninteresting can you get? The passion of revolt, the drama of power, the lessons of history, the contingencies of human emotion, the intricacy of human societies . . . . Forget it. When will he quit? He should&rsquo;ve quit by now. And the same thing had happened a few days earlier, in the case of Egypt&rsquo;s Hosni Mubarak.</p><p>In this atmosphere, it was nothing for foreign correspondents to morph themselves into incarnations of &ldquo;the democracy movement,&rdquo; wherever they thought they had found it, heedless of their foreign citizenship and their glaring lack of political knowledge. &ldquo;We are all Egyptians now!&rdquo; proclaimed many American welcomers of Mubarak&rsquo;s fall. I don&rsquo;t mind that Mubarak fell, although I would like to know who will replace him. But I am not an Egyptian, nor do I walk like one.</p><div class="pullquote"><p>It was nothing for foreign correspondents to morph themselves into incarnations of &ldquo;the democracy movement,&rdquo; heedless of their foreign citizenship and their glaring lack of political knowledge.</p></div><p>David Hume, who had an important, though not a crucial, influence on libertarian thought, observed that &ldquo;in reality there is not a more terrible event than a total dissolution of government, which gives liberty to the multitude, and makes the determination or choice of a new establishment depend upon a number which nearly approaches to that of the body of the people.&rdquo; I&rsquo;m not sure that this is true, though I suspect it is. A &quot;total dissolution&quot; of government by the mob is plainly not what even anarchist libertarians ever had in mind, because it is likely to lead to a new and terrible establishment of power. Shouldn&rsquo;t a more reserved, conceivably more skeptical, point of view be entertained, if only for a moment, when the media report on the furor of &ldquo;democratic&rdquo; crowds?</p><p>I&rsquo;ll return to &ldquo;democracy&rdquo; a little later. But here&rsquo;s Shep Smith, in his impatience for the overthrow of Qaddafi: &ldquo;If the military doesn&rsquo;t turn on him, we&rsquo;re looking at a real possibility of genocide.&rdquo;</p><p>Genocide? Did he say <em>genocide?</em> An attempt to exterminate a whole people? Was Qaddafi attempting to exterminate his fellow Libyans, as the Nazis attempted to exterminate the Jews? Of course not. All we saw in Libya was a revolution and perhaps the beginning of a civil war. Insurgents were attempting to overthrow an absolutist government, and the government was responding as such governments are wont to respond.</p><p>Now, this rhetorical redefinition of a morally important word, &ldquo;genocide,&rdquo; is disgusting in itself. But consider Smith&rsquo;s summary of the reasons for his attack on Qaddafi: &ldquo;This man has sent foreign mercenaries out to murder citizens? Come on!&rdquo;</p><p>It is wrong, by definition, to send people out to &ldquo;murder&rdquo; other people. But that isn&rsquo;t genocide. And the claim that it happened isn&rsquo;t proof that it happened. Maybe it did. It&rsquo;s the job of the media to report on that, not to provide us with moral labels in place of news. On all the networks and news services, Mubarak and Qaddafi have been habitually identified, for the benefit of Americans who presumably require such identifications, as &ldquo;brutal dictator Hosni Mubarak&rdquo; and &ldquo;brutal dictator Muammar Qaddafi.&rdquo; I&rsquo;m not concerned about the insult to Qaddafi, who is certainly a brutal dictator, or about the insult to Mubarak, who may well have been such; I&rsquo;m concerned about the insult to the audience. Fox&rsquo;s slogan is, &ldquo;We report; you decide.&rdquo; Well, only in some cases. In others, the audience is assumed to consist entirely of babies, who must be told what to &ldquo;decide.&rdquo;</p><div class="pullquote"><p>An adult listener might still be curious to know how this insane person could possibly have continued in charge of an ancient, populous country for four long decades.</p></div><p>Actual information about the regimes of the North African authoritarians would be of interest, perhaps of compelling interest. But you could spend (and I have spent) many hours watching network coverage of North African events without ever hearing any presentation of political facts that lasted longer than a minute. One example was the treatment provided by Piers Morgan, the new messiah-interviewer at CNN. On February 22, Morgan modestly stated that CNN had &ldquo;oversold&rdquo; him to its audience &mdash; a claim he had already proven by his long, lugubrious, pointless conversations with people who asserted some knowledge of Libya. Most of these people were just oohing and ahing about how terrible Qaddafi is, but whenever any of them tried to fill the audience in on the nature of Libyan politics &mdash; the tribal divisions, the ideological divisions, the historical divisions, the people&#39;s inexperience with self-government &mdash; Morgan gave them short shrift. He asked no follow-up questions. He asked for no background information. He asked for no supporting facts. He switched to questions like, &ldquo;So what is Qaddafi really like?&rdquo;, and he soon tired of answers that went beyond &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a brutal dictator.&rdquo;</p><p>His colleague Anderson Cooper was worse. Rather than presenting Qaddafi&rsquo;s rants as the news they were, and letting them speak for themselves, he insisted on telling his audience how to think &mdash; and even not to think &mdash; about them. Introducing a one-minute clip of Qaddafi&rsquo;s February 22 address, Cooper said, &ldquo;He&rsquo;s almost comical in his appearance, but don&rsquo;t be fooled by his buffoonery.&rdquo; Thanks, Anderson! I&rsquo;m a baby, so I&rsquo;m easily fooled. But you&rsquo;ve kept me from swallowing that rattle.</p><p>After the Qaddafi clip, Cooper introduced Ben Wedeman, CNN&rsquo;s correspondent in eastern Libya. Wedeman wanted to put Americans at ease with the Libyans. About Libyans&rsquo; opinion of Qaddafi he said: &ldquo;They know he&rsquo;s insane.&rdquo; Well good; I&#39;m glad to hear it. But an adult listener might still be curious to know how this insane person could possibly have continued in charge of an ancient, populous country for four long decades? Didn&rsquo;t anybody know he was insane? If people knew, why didn&rsquo;t they do something about it? If they didn&rsquo;t know, what does that say about the Libyan body politic? And what does all this tell us about the possibility of a real freedom movement in Libya? These questions weren&rsquo;t worth pursuing, either by CNN or by its rival, Fox.</p><p>Among other things, this is a commentary on the American media&rsquo;s abject devotion to the great and mysterious idol, Democracy. No questions must be allowed to interfere with the liturgy of this god, as recited daily by its media priests. At the same time, I haven&rsquo;t heard a single question from the media about the authoritarian language that our own government has been using about recent events in North Africa. What kind of government is it that announces to a foreign nation that its leader &ldquo;must go&rdquo;? Answer: the Obama regime, first about Mubarak, then about Qaddafi. If the gentlemen in question had possessed any sense of humor, they would have made speeches in which they proclaimed that Obama &ldquo;must go!&rdquo;</p><div class="pullquote"><p>No questions must be allowed to interfere with the liturgy of the god Democracy, as recited daily by its media priests.</p></div><p>As readers of this journal may remember, I have zero respect for the idea that the boundaries of dictatorial states are somehow sacred and that no armed forces must ever cross them. Those borders aren&rsquo;t sacred to me. Yet the arrogance of the Obama administration takes my breath away &mdash; despite the fact that there&rsquo;s a long tradition of this: the Bush administration showed the same arrogance, and so did most other administrations, all the way back to Woodrow Wilson. Arrogance, and hypocrisy. When American administrations demand &ldquo;democratic reforms&rdquo; in other countries, they never ask themselves whether it&rsquo;s democratic for foreigners to dictate to the people who live there.</p><p>But speaking of democracy in the Middle East, let&rsquo;s consider the &ldquo;democracy&rdquo; movement in Wisconsin, where state-employee labor unions are desperately trying to block the governor and legislature from passing a bill cutting their funds and limiting their power. The Republican governor was elected, four months ago, on a platform of doing exactly that; the legislature, elected at the same time, is overwhelmingly Republican and prepared to follow through on the scheme, if it can get just one Democratic senator to show up and make a quorum. Well, that&rsquo;s democracy, isn&rsquo;t it? But no: in the name of &ldquo;democracy,&rdquo; union hordes invaded and occupied the capitol, attempting to shut down the government, and Democratic legislators, unanimously friends of big labor, fled the state. Leftist demonstrators continue parading up and down State Street in Madison, carrying signs likening the governor to Qaddafi and Mubarak. They also carry signs announcing their own righteousness, signs saying, &ldquo;This Is What Democracy Looks Like.&rdquo;</p><div class="pullquote"><p>When American administrations demand &ldquo;democratic reforms&rdquo; in other countries, they never ask themselves whether it&rsquo;s democratic for foreigners to dictate to the people who live there.</p></div><p>We see again the kindergarten approach. What do you think democracy is, children? You don&rsquo;t know? Well, here&rsquo;s a pretty picture. But when normal adults see such a slogan, employed by such people, their first impulse is to laugh. Democracy? There was an election; the voters said what they wanted; it just didn&#39;t happen to be what the protestors wanted. So who&#39;s on the side of democracy &mdash; the protestors, or the voters they oppose? And notice, this is a rebellion of people who are getting <em>paid</em> by the voters, people who insist that they have a right to as much pay and power as they can get, no matter what the voters want. Doesn&rsquo;t that sound more like dictatorship than democracy?</p><p>Strangely, however, the protestors&rsquo; slogans strike most of the media as cogent indeed. To cite only one of many amusing instances: on February 26, at 3:00 p.m. (EST), CBS Radio&rsquo;s hourly news offered a report from Madison. It consisted of the following: Young woman&rsquo;s voice speaking over the noise of demonstrators. Young woman: &ldquo;This is what democracy looks like. These are the people of Wisconsin, fighting for their rights.&rdquo; End of report.</p><p>The woman may have been one of the demonstrators, or she may have been a CBS correspondent in Madison. The absence of identification allowed listeners to make up their own minds about the provenance of the propaganda. The difficulty of deciding who she was exemplifies how hard it often is to distinguish nonsense from &quot;news,&quot; leftist agitprop from normal media blather. Of course no question was asked, no remark made, about any of the <em>brutally </em>obvious issues that the &ldquo;report&rdquo; raised. Would you expect there to be? No, not unless the babies in charge of the news were replaced by intelligent people who respected the intelligence of their audience.</p><p>You might remark, as many libertarian thinkers have remarked, that &ldquo;democracy&rdquo; is not a word that (<em>pace</em> the media) is simply synonymous with &ldquo;good.&rdquo; You might make the historical observation that unlimited democracy &mdash; democracy without legally enforceable respect for rights or a government of limited powers &mdash; has often resulted in predatory regimes. You might record your skepticism about the legitimacy either of crowds shouting in the streets or of dictators who advertise themselves as the embodiments of crowds shouting in the streets. If you did that, you would be expressing nothing more than common sense and common knowledge of the world. But common sense and common knowledge will never get you a job in the information industry of America.</p> </div>
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&lt;p&gt;Stephen Cox is editor of &lt;em&gt;Liberty&lt;/em&gt;, and a professor of literature at the University of California San Diego. His recent books include &lt;em&gt;The Big House: Image and Reality of the American Prison&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;American Christianity: The Continuing Revolution&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; </div>
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http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/492#commentsarrogancedemocracyegyptlaborlibyamiddle eastunionswisconsinWord WatchThu, 03 Mar 2011 03:42:37 +0000LibertyUnbound492 at http://www.libertyunbound.com